UP's women voters led BJP to take action against Brij Bhushan

New Delhi: Caste considerations aside, its women voters in Uttar Pradesh were a significant cause for worry for the Bharatiya Janata Party which led it to decide to take action against Brij Bhushan Sharan Sharma, accused of sexual harassment.

Sources in the BJP said that the Eastern UP strongman’s defiance was beginning to hurt the party; Birj Bhushan had recently announced his retirement from wrestling after the party intervened. Sources said that the optics of Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra meeting the women wrestlers did not sit well with the party’s leaders in Delhi.

On Wednesday, Rahul Gandhi, too, met protesting wrestler Bajrang Punia and spent the morning wrestling with him at the Virender Arya Akhara in Haryana’s Jhajjar district. BJP leaders, who did not wish to be named, said that the image of the weeping wrestlers, with Olympian Sakshi Malik deciding to call time on her wrestling career, did not make for good optics for the BJP.

A senior party leader from Uttar Pradesh, said that the ‘award wapsi’ of wrestlers Punia and Vignesh Phogat added to pressure, already mounting on the party.

Sources said that party president JP Nadda, who summoned Brij Bhushan over the weekend, asked him to explain his conduct after allegations of him influencing the elections of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) emerged. After the meeting, the Kaiserganj MP immediately announced that he will no longer be involved with the sport.

A senior party spokesperson said that the Opposition can raise the issue of women safety. “Now they will focus on this one incident without looking at the achievements of the Modi government in gender equality in the last nine years; the Congress has already said that if Olympians are not safe, then how will other women be safe. We know that’s not the case but this can cause damage,” the spokesperson said.

A BJP leader from Eastern UP, considered as close to Brij Bhushan, said that the BJP did not withdraw support from the wrestler initially. “This sent out a good message to supporters of Brij Bhushan as well as the party’s,” the leader said. “Brij Bhushan, if one looks closely, has also not rebelled.”

Brij Bhushan, who had started out in the 1990s and during LK Advani’s Rath Yatra and had volunteered to drive the rath, pledged to carry out a rally earlier this year of sadhus in Ayodhya. He was asked by the party to not do so, and he listened. He was also asked to not field his wife or any of his associates in the zila panchayat polls, and he listened to the party.

“But his utterances such as ‘Dabdaba to hai, dabdaba to rahega’ (my influence exists, it will prevail) did not help his case. The prime minister does not like these attitudes – in politics, people relate to those who are seen as ‘yachi’ (sincere) or ‘kamjor’ (weak). If you exhibit your strength as a ‘bahubali’ (strongman), then it causes more harm than help,” the Eastern UP lawmaker quoted above said.

Brij Bhushan, who holds influence in Eastern UP, holds sway in Lok Sabha seats such as Gonda, Balrampur, etc. The Jats in the region have usually voted for the BJP, and the BJP won more than 80 seats in the 2016 assembly polls and more than 70 seats in the 2020 polls, after the farmers’ protests.

“The BJP does not enjoy the support of the Jats in Haryana anyway; what the furore has done is that Brij Bhushan is now a bigger Rajput leader than he ever was,” the lawmaker said.